Turning into a skid?

[Electronic Chaos]

I've always heard that when skidding, you should turn yoru wheel into it and it will apparently help you control it. However, this seems to go against common sense which says you'll just start skidding more in the direction your going rather than controlling it. Then again, sometimes the laws of physics completely defy common sense, so can someone help me figure this out?

[robcaro]

I have lived in many northern states including Alaska and I know that turning in to a skid gives you control. If you turn away from the skid, you will immediately go into a spin and will be totally out of control and probably in a serious accident.

[chrisk]

I've always heard that when skidding, you should turn yoru wheel into it and it will apparently help you control it. However, this seems to go against common sense which says you'll just start skidding more in the direction your going rather than controlling it. Then again, sometimes the laws of physics completely defy common sense, so can someone help me figure this out?

IANAD. (I am not a driver.)

To me, though, it makes perfect sense. Skidding is a case of the wheels sliding, generally. When you turn away from the skid, inertia gives you no choice but to continue sliding, which means you stay out of control and may end up rotating as you slide.

When you turn into the skid, your wheels are rolling in the same direction as your car is sliding. Hopefully this gives you a good opportunity to stop sliding and start rolling on the wheels again. Once you're rolling on your wheels, you have traction and can once again control where the car is going.

Did that make any sense??

[Early Out]

Let's make sure that we understand what it means to "turn into a skid." Let's say as you start skidding, the tail of your car starts moving to the right, relative to your intended line of travel. Instead of facing straight ahead, you're now facing slightly to the left side of the road. You should turn the wheel to the right. That's what's meant by "turning into the skid."

In fact, it's one of those rules that's stated in a stupid, confusing way. If you're skidding, turn your wheels in the direction you want to go. Much simpler than trying to figure out which way you're skidding.

[Dog80]

I've always heard that when skidding, you should turn yoru wheel into it and it will apparently help you control it.

Dorifto Time! :p
If you want to learn more about drifting and countersteering, you should buy this DVD: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000YEDTK/qid=1098406864/sr=8-3/ref=pd_csp_3/103-3780909-6231055?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846

[Squink]

If you're skidding, turn your wheels in the direction you want to go. I've found that this also works well when I'm not skidding. Plus it's a heck of a lot easier to do than trying to coax meaning out of a stupidly worded phrase while simultaneously sliding sideways towards disaster!

[enipla]

What you are trying to do is keep your front wheels pointed in the direction that your car is traveling. Or at least in the direction you want to go. So they keep rolling, and not skiding. A rolling tire has much better traction than a skiding tire.

If your back end kicks out to the right. Turn your front wheels to the right.

Now, if your on a mountain curve, you may be screwed either way. But what you are trying to do is give your front wheels control. If they are moving sideways to your direction of travel, they will skid and not have any control. Try to keep your front wheels rolling and not skidding.

[Joey P]

This one took me a while to understand, but one day just sort of clicked, and I think I may have found a way to demonstrate it, but I haven't tried it. Get a bicycle out (you may have to do this on a rainy/slippery day, and it may work with a smaller/lighter bike. Anyways, with the front wheel and rear wheel pointed straight ahead, push the bike sideways, but at an angle. So if 12:00 is staight ahead, push it towards 2:00. (Still with the wheels pointed foward, now it should be skidding). Now, if you were driving, the natural reaction would be to turn the wheel to the left, so turn it to 11:00, what happens, just keeps skidding. Now turn it to 1:00 (not pointed all the way in the direction that your skidding, since in a car you usually can't turn the wheel that far, but close). What happens, if my concept works (untested remember) hopefully the front wheel should catch and start to turn, then you can regain control. Does that make sense???

[MaryEFoo]

Joey, good clear description (to me anyway).

One rainy night on CA Hwy 92, heading over the ridges to Half Moon Bay, my car started to slide going around a switchback that curved to the right. It was a old heavy high-center-of-gravity car and it was sliding across the lane toward the steep drop-off at the far side of the road (all 4 tires sliding, the car pointed SW almost W but still moving South).

I had never really understood "steer into the skid", but at least I didn't want it to roll over, so I pointed the wheels S (toward the cliff, even though I sure didn't want to go there), and voila, the front wheels rolled OK now and the car straightened out. So I turned again toward the SW and it broke loose again; turned it S and carefully SW and then W and this time it worked, and I came around the curve on the wrong side of the road, but upright and mostly on the pavement.

So the technical term would probably be "a fishtail and a half", and a minute later, I pulled over and sat there laughing and whooping and bouncing on the seat, very triumphant 'cuz I wasn't dead. Adrenaline is fun.

[Colophon]

I don't see how your "natural reaction" could be anything other than steering into the skid. It doesn't seem in the least counter-intuitive to me. If the back of my car is sliding out to the right, I want to do something that will swing it back in to the left. Anyone with the most basic grasp of steering knows that if you turn the wheel to the right, the rear of the car swings left relative to the front. What's not to understand?

[Colophon]

Oops, hit submit too soon. This might illustrate why you want to steer into the skid a bit better.

There's a nasty road with lots of curves on it that I drive to the station every day. Plenty of people have come to grief on it, as the wilting bouquets of flowers on several trees on bends testify :(

Anyway, one thing I always notice about the crash sites is that they are usually on the inside of a bend, after the apex. There's a sharp left-hand bend, with a big oak tree just after the bend on the left. Lots of people have smacked into that tree. You'd think that if you were skidding you'd be likely to go off the road to the right, but in fact what happens is that the rear of the car skids out to the right. If you steer into the skid, you have a good chance of straightening it up, but if you don't - or, worse, if you hit the brakes - when your tyres suddenly regain traction you will be pointing too far left and will suddenly shoot off the road on the inside of the bend. That is bad news.

[rjk]

<snip>
So the technical term would probably be "a fishtail and a half", and a minute later, I pulled over and sat there laughing and whooping and bouncing on the seat, very triumphant 'cuz I wasn't dead. Adrenaline is fun.
Not being dead has that effect on people, doesn't it? :cool: Great story!

Having driven on icy roads for quite a few years (dusty ones in the first few minutes of a thunderstorm are nearly as slippery), I learned early how to straighten out a skid. That saved me a few nasty accidents.

[Colophon]

Coincidentally, not half an hour after I wrote the above-but-one post, I set off for work on wet roads, turned right out of the end of my road with a bit of a heavy right foot, and got a very satisfying fishtail action. I can confirm that I wound the wheel back to the left and the car righted itself rapidly. (The electronic traction control no doubt helped, too.)

Woke me up a little, anyway :eek:

[Trunk]

I think the good thing is that you just naturally steer into it without beng conscious of it.

You don't need to know about physics or steering or anything -- you just automatically do what's right. Now it doesn't sound right, because you're thinking, "my car is skidding off the road to the right, and I'm supposed to steer that way?" Well, yeah, if you turn the wheel to the left, I think 2 things can happen:

1) You just skid off the road to the right sideways.

2) The car catches as the speed drops and all of a sudden you're going in the direction that you pointed the wheels, i.e. into the middle of the curve. If I followed Colophon this might be what happens on that bend.

You see both things happen if you watch enough NASCAR (guys into the wall, and guys who "catch" and go into the infield.) *This is from memory now* but when Dale Earnhardt died, it looked like he started skidding to the left because of contact and wrongly steered to the right, which caught and sent him up into the wall. A NASCAR driver's natural reaction is to steer to the right because that's the direction of most of their skids. (but, there was a lot of contact during that crash. It's almost a crap-shoot from one instance to the next which way you're skidding. )

The problem might be reaction time and overcorrection for some people. I've skidded on an icy road, turned into it, then had the car come around the other way. You steer back into that one, and the car comes back around the original way.

Hopefully, you will damp out the fishtailing, but if you miss one, the car will swing around.

I recommend to anyone who lives in a place that gets ice and snow to go out and intentionally put the car in a skid in a wide open parking lot after a storm.

[KidCharlemagne]

I don't see how your "natural reaction" could be anything other than steering into the skid. It doesn't seem in the least counter-intuitive to me.

Ditto. This seems like one of those things that would be automatic if people now didn't stop and say "Shit, which way was I supposed to turn this damn thing?"

[fezpp]

I think the reason that it is not intutitive is that drivers are used to sitting behind the steering wheel following the nose of the car. When going into a skid (lets use the example of turning left and back wheels moving to the right in relation to the road) the driver suddenly finds themselves at an angle to the road. This means that the driver's postion in relation to the car is to the right of where they are used to being. ie. the steering wheel and bonnet are conceptually to the left of them. When under pressure and panicking I could see why people might turn to the left to correct this.

[Colophon]

2) The car catches as the speed drops and all of a sudden you're going in the direction that you pointed the wheels, i.e. into the middle of the curve. If I followed Colophon this might be what happens on that bend.
Yes, that's exactly what I meant.

The problem might be reaction time and overcorrection for some people. I've skidded on an icy road, turned into it, then had the car come around the other way. You steer back into that one, and the car comes back around the original way.

Hopefully, you will damp out the fishtailing, but if you miss one, the car will swing around.
I'll second that. The only time I have ever spun a car was in snow. I drove to the cinema and it was raining. Sometime while I was watching the film, the temperature dropped enough to freeze the untreated wet roads, so there was now a nice layer of ice, on top of which snow continued to fall. I could barely keep on my feet walking back to the car, and thought, "Hmm, driving home will be fun!" :dubious:

So, I babied the car along at not much more than walking pace. It was fine until I got to the first roundabout, at which point the back wheels broke away to the left. I steered left, and the back then broke out to the right. I steered back into that and the process repeated. After about five or six of these, I overcorrected and spun gracefully through 360 degrees, coming to rest pointing in exactly the right direction :cool: It was late at night and the road was wide, so I hadn't hit anything. It was almost comical spinning a car at about 5mph. Luckily, I soon made it onto roads that had been gritted.

The forecast is for this winter to be exceptionally cold in the UK... and I now have a rear-wheel drive car with wide tyres that will be utterly useless in snow :smack:

[Colophon]

I think the reason that it is not intutitive is that drivers are used to sitting behind the steering wheel following the nose of the car. When going into a skid (lets use the example of turning left and back wheels moving to the right in relation to the road) the driver suddenly finds themselves at an angle to the road. This means that the driver's postion in relation to the car is to the right of where they are used to being. ie. the steering wheel and bonnet are conceptually to the left of them. When under pressure and panicking I could see why people might turn to the left to correct this.
I still don't really get this. You're at an angle to the road, yes, but looking straight ahead (from your position in the driving seat) you're staring at the left-hand kerb/wall/ditch. I know which way my instinct would be to steer in this situation, and it wouldn't be towards the left!

[Jinx]

I still don't really get this. You're at an angle to the road, yes, but looking straight ahead (from your position in the driving seat) you're staring at the left-hand kerb/wall/ditch. I know which way my instinct would be to steer in this situation, and it wouldn't be towards the left!

a) It's actually good you don't get this because you are correct!

b) In general, there is misconception about what is meant by "steer into the skid". This is the root of the confusion. Fezpp is trying to say that we see things from the driver's seat. If the car is skidding to the left from the driver's perspective, then the MISAPPLIED rule would dictate to keep going left!

As pointed out in this thread, the rear of the car is skidding in the opposite direction, and yes, THIS WOULD FEEL INTUITIVE, but is it correct?

c) Wait a minute! Does this rule hold true for front-wheel drive cars, as well? In a rear wheel drive car, the driver and the drive wheels are moving in OPPOSITE directions during a skid, as pointed out. But, if front-end drive, the driver and drive wheels are moving in the SAME direction! If I feel the car slipping, I want to steer against it to compensate, correct? In other words, if the front end is slipping (skidding) to the left, I want to gently steer to the right, correct?
- Jinx

[Jinx]

b) In general, there is misconception about what is meant by "steer into the skid". This is the root of the confusion. Fezpp is trying to say that we see things from the driver's seat. If the car is skidding to the left from the driver's perspective, then the MISAPPLIED rule would dictate to keep going left!

As pointed out in this thread, the rear of the car is skidding in the opposite direction, and yes, THIS WOULD FEEL INTUITIVE, but is it correct?


a) Clarifying: By this last statement, I meant that many drivers might have a split second of hesitatation to wonder "Is this correct?" as they think about following the MISAPPLIED rule. Hopefully, common sense and gut instinct will guide them to the correct decision: If the driver finds the front end of the car skidding to the left, they steer into the skid by steering right because the back end is moving to the right.

b) The question remains if this rule is true for front-wheel drive, as well?
- Jinx

[Colophon]

a) It's actually good you don't get this because you are correct!

b) In general, there is misconception about what is meant by "steer into the skid". This is the root of the confusion. Fezpp is trying to say that we see things from the driver's seat. If the car is skidding to the left from the driver's perspective, then the MISAPPLIED rule would dictate to keep going left!
Yes, I know this - but I think Fezpp was trying to say that the intuitive thing would be to turn left. That is what I was disagreeing with. The intuitive thing for me, and I suspect most drivers, is to do the correct thing - turn into the skid, which in this case is towards the right.

[Sean Factotum]

Bill Cosby once said that turning into a skid to regain control seemed to make as much sense as leaning into a punch to minimize the pain. Can't remember the exact quote (off one of the albums), but that was the gyst of it. Yes, counterintuitive. But as explained several times above, it really does work.

[fezpp]

I think Fezpp was trying to say that the intuitive thing would be to turn left. That is what I was disagreeing with. The intuitive thing for me, and I suspect most drivers, is to do the correct thing - turn into the skid, which in this case is towards the right.

I actually completely agree. My intuition would be to turn right but I was trying to explain a situation where someone's intuition may force them to turn the other way.

[RogueRacer]

c) Wait a minute! Does this rule hold true for front-wheel drive cars, as well? In a rear wheel drive car, the driver and the drive wheels are moving in OPPOSITE directions during a skid, as pointed out. But, if front-end drive, the driver and drive wheels are moving in the SAME direction! If I feel the car slipping, I want to steer against it to compensate, correct? In other words, if the front end is slipping (skidding) to the left, I want to gently steer to the right, correct?
- JinxYes, it is also true for a front wheel drive car if the back end of the car is sliding. This condition is called oversteer (or loose for you NASCAR fans).**

A front wheel drive car can act differently than a rear wheel drive car in an understeer condition (that's tight or a push for the NASCAR fans). This is when you turn the wheels and the front of the car slides. This can happen fairly easily on slippery roads. It can also happen at high speeds such as on a race track. In this case, your front tires have exceeded their traction limit (slip angle). You need to reduce the amount of traction that you are trying to use from the tires.

With front wheel drive, hitting the brakes can be bad since that also uses some available traction. Hitting the gas does the same thing. In fact, you can play around with this on a snowy day. If you try this, make sure there is no traffic around, I'm not responsible, etc.

Stop at an intersection. Slowly proceed forward and turn either left or right, keeping traction. Now press the accelerator until you feel the tires start to spin. Your car will immediately quit turning and start heading straight. Just let off the gas to recover. You can repeat this same experiment using the brakes. It will do the same thing if you use too much brake. One last way to cure the problem is to just reduce the amount your wheels are turned (make a wider turn in other words). Just don't panic and make sure there is nothing you can hit before you try it. To sum up, with understeer and a front wheel drive car, let off the gas or brake or turn less.

Understeer with rear wheel drive can also be cured by letting off the gas. Braking can again be bad especially since most passenger vehicles get more braking from the front wheels. However, you can also cure an understeer condition with a rear wheel drive vehicle by hitting the gas. What you are trying to do is reduce the traction of the rear wheels, allowing the front tires to grab again. You most likely will never try this on the street, but it's a common practice on a race track.

As far as the original "steering into a skid" thing and racing, it's used all the time too. Watch some dirt sprint cars to see this in a highly exaggerated way. The hardest part for me when I get my race car loose (back end is sliding) is that I actually have to turn towards the concrete wall around the track to save it. Things can get kind of anxious as you steer towards a concrete wall while traveling at a high rate of speed!



**If you have read the whole explanation, you can see that it may help to hit the gas with a front wheel drive car when you are in an oversteer condition. These are the kind of things I try out when I'm bored on a snowy road and no traffic is around. :)

[danceswithcats]

Reading posts to this thread is why I like to take new drivers out to the high school parking lot after the first snow and let them get used to skid recovery. An ambulance or fire truck getting akimbo on the road is something I want the driver to recover from instinctively, should it happen.

Plus, under controlled circumstances it's kinda fun to play in the snow with big trucks! :D

[Dog80]

So, I babied the car along at not much more than walking pace. It was fine until I got to the first roundabout, at which point the back wheels broke away to the left. I steered left, and the back then broke out to the right. I steered back into that and the process repeated. After about five or six of these, I overcorrected and spun gracefully through 360 degrees, coming to rest pointing in exactly the right direction :cool: It was late at night and the road was wide, so I hadn't hit anything. It was almost comical spinning a car at about 5mph. Luckily, I soon made it onto roads that had been gritted.

The reason your car was fishtailing was probably because you released the gas pedal, or even worse, you applied the brakes. You see, steering into the skid (or counter-steering as is the correct term) is not always enough. You have to keep pressing the gas pedal too. If you release it, the weight transition will make the rear end lighter and you'll end up doing a 180o turn.

[Cliffy]

I, too, hate the terminology "steer into a skid" and it caused me hesitation problems when I was first learning to drive. I think it makes more sense to think of it in terms of rotation. Say that forward is 12:00. When you skid, your car starts rotating towards 3:00 or 9:00 (although your direction of travel stays roughly the same). You always want to steer back to 12:00.

I grew up driving in bad weather so I'm usually pretty good at dealing with it. But one time I was driving down a steep hill in a rain. I came to a stop sign so I started braking and I went into a fast couter-clockwise skid which ended in me blowing the stop sign and then facing backwards on the road, still moving in the original direction. I should have used the gas pedal to arrest my downhill motion, but instead I braked. By the time the car stopped I had gone up the curb and was sitting with one wheel in the devil strip. I looked around and I had managed to stop about a foot away from a telephone pole. ;)

That evening, my friend Allan came home looking frazzled -- when I asked what was up, he explained that while going through that same intersection he did the exact same thing -- but he hit the pole. I, wisely, kept my mouth shut. :cool:

--Cliffy

[Mr. Slant]

Could I assume that keeping the same throttle position while simply RELEASING the steering wheel would be the same as steering into the skid?

[commasense]

Could I assume that keeping the same throttle position while simply RELEASING the steering wheel would be the same as steering into the skid?Absolutely not. You have to turn the wheel in the direction you want to go. Releasing the wheel and maintaining power will put you into a spin. But let's start at the beginning.

There are two problems with the "steer into a skid" advice, namely that the meanings of "into" and "skid" are not eminently clear.

Let's start with skidding. Only Rogue Racer has alluded to the fact that there are two distinct kinds of "skid." The one most commonly thought of is oversteer: the rear end of the car swings out. This is usually induced by applying too much power while the front wheels are turned, often in wet conditions.

The car is rotating and to regain control you have to turn the front wheels in the direction you want the car to go. If your rear is swinging out to the left, you have to turn the steering wheel to the left. This is what is properly meant by "steering into the skid." But I've talked to people who thought (and I think this is what Bill Cosby thought) that "steering into" meant "in the same direction as the rotation, " i.e. to the right, which is wrong.

In these circumstances, many people tend to overcorrect, and can save it from the original skid, only to lose it in the other direction. If they're lucky, they may just swing the rear back and forth a couple of times before getting it to straight. Do not jerk the wheel suddenly. You have to be smooth.

BTW, if you are in a spin and go past 90 degrees (your direction of travel is straight out the side window), just hit the brake (and clutch if you have one) hard, because you will not be able to bring it back.

The other form of skidding is understeer, which is most commonly encountered in icy and snowy conditions. You turn the steering wheel, but the car keeps going straight. This is not the time to think of "steering into the skid." In fact, that advice makes no sense in this situation. This is also the time when you have to do something completely counter-intuitive, namely stop turning the wheel in the direction you want to go, and turn back towards straight. Your front wheels are turned and are sliding; they have no traction. Turning them further in the direction you want to go will not help. Unfortunately, that is the very natural inclination of most drivers: the car's not turning, so I have to turn the wheel more. Actually, you have to straighten the wheel until the front tires start to grip again, then slowly turn back the way you want to go. If they lose grip again, straighten up again.

Without training in this technique, most people never figure it out on their own or do it in an emergency. They just keep turning the wheel, or worse, turn and brake. When you are in understeer and brake, you transfer weight to the front and take it off the rear, and can put yourself in a spin, because the front wheels may start to grip and your rear will be light. Slamming on the brakes on ice will usually not help, since you can't control a car when all four wheels are sliding.

Finally, the reason people often hit a tree in an accident is because they were looking at it. Hand-eye coordination is a mysterious thing, and works much better than most people realize. Believe it or not, you will go where you are looking, and when you lose control and see a tree that you are worried about hitting, you naturally focus directly on it, and as a result, drive right into it. You have to look at the space between the trees! Hard to do, but vital.

--commasense (race driving instructor)

[jkirkman]

On “over steer” (I am neither correcting anyone who has posted here nor claiming expert status).

Everyone who has driven a road car and gotten it out of shape has felt this. You get loose, the back end takes off, you correct, then the car snaps back the other way (but less, hopefully), you correct the other way, and, pendulum-like, make consecutive opposite corrections in a gradually diminishing progression (hopefully).

When I started racing WKA Karts (unsprung go-kart racing thingies), I found they behaved entirely differently when they broke loose. Assuming you could correct at all (they tend to break loose HARD when they go), there was little “over steer”, you just kinda steered out of it.

When I asked about it, this is the explanation I got (no cites). A road car is sprung. Unless you are on a frictionless skid pad, the tires will provide friction in a skid, and the body will roll and load energy into the suspension (springs, shocks) on the side you are skidding into. When you steer out, even if you provide the EXACT amount of steering to correct and no more, as soon as you stop the loading on the suspension, it will unload the stored energy in the springs/struts/shocks in the opposite direction and upset the chassis. I was told that, to a degree, “over correcting” was unavoidable due to physics. Of course, you could always over correct on top of the physics, in which case you got to meet Mr. Ditch.

[enipla]

The other form of skidding is understeer, which is most commonly encountered in icy and snowy conditions. You turn the steering wheel, but the car keeps going straight. This is not the time to think of "steering into the skid." In fact, that advice makes no sense in this situation. This is also the time when you have to do something completely counter-intuitive, namely stop turning the wheel in the direction you want to go, and turn back towards straight. Your front wheels are turned and are sliding; they have no traction. Turning them further in the direction you want to go will not help. Unfortunately, that is the very natural inclination of most drivers: the car's not turning, so I have to turn the wheel more. Actually, you have to straighten the wheel until the front tires start to grip again, then slowly turn back the way you want to go. If they lose grip again, straighten up again. I also thought this was just common sence.

And one more form of skidding. Four wheel drift. I drive mountain passes every day. In winter I deal with LOTS of ice and snow. In four wheel drive, four wheel drift is more common than in two wheel drive. I generaly treat it like any other skid (keep the wheels pointed in the direction of travel). Sometimes though, it can help to turn your wheels out of the skid (a little bit) and apply power (4X4 only).

Every situation is different, and only experience and gut reactions will really help. As others have said, I always thought this was just a common sence reaction to your car. Surely nothing you would have to think about. If you DO have to think about it while in a skid, It's probably to late anyway. Your best bet then is practice in a controled environment.